Sunday, April 27, 2014

BATSOWL - The British Batman of 1918

As most of you will know, this year marks the 75th anniversary of Batman. However, the notion of costumed 'bat-men' didn't originate with Bob Kane's creation. One such earlier character was Batsowl, who starred in a series of prose stories in the British comic Illustrated Chips in 1918.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that there was any connection of course. Bob Kane was born in 1915, so it's highly unlikely he'd have seen a British comic when he was three years old. However, there are some interesting similarities between the two characters, not least being the costume, as you can see from the header illustration above.Like Batman, Batsowl's other identity was a wealthy figure. In this case, an Earl, Desmond Devance...

He also had a secret underground laboratory, not dissimilar to the Batcave...

...and his appearance struck terror into people...

Sadly, like most British comics of the time, Batsowl is uncredited. I don't know how long the serial ran as I only have one episode, which is the one I'm showing here. It's from Illustrated Chips No.1477, dated December 21st 1918. This was one of the comics presented as a facsimile in 1972 in the Six Comics of World War One collection. (More info about those comics here.)

It's highly likely that both Batman and Batsowl were both partially influenced by The Phantom of the Opera, written in 1909, and The Scarlet Pimpernel (which was adapted as a very popular London play in 1905).

Click on the image below to read this chapter of Batsowl and see the 'British Batman' for yourselves...

10 comments:

Blimey! (As you might say.) This is really interesting and the story itself is actually a good read too, would be interesting to read other episodes not only to find out the author, but to see if there are any other similarities too!

No doubt someone out there has more episodes so perhaps we'll hear more about it. Time Warner (who own DC Comics) now own the rights to those old Chips comics so they could publish it themselves and even bring him back for a team-up with Batman!

There's another possible influence on this story. The penny dreadful Spring-Heeled Jack series, published by Aldine in 1904.

Bertram Wraydon, (ooh... look at those initials), is accused of spying for the French by his nasty cousin and loses his estate to him. Wraydon is sentenced to death but escapes to seek his revenge. Most people in the story remain unaware of this and it's all a bit Count of Monte Cristo.

He also has a costume with bat-wings & pointy-eared headgear, lurks about a lot in shadows and fog, is from a wealthy background, has a secret hideout, various gadgets, (such as a flaming gas grenade), likes to help all victims of wrong-doing, and obviously leaps about quite a bit.

There's also apparently a bit where he carves a letter 'S' into someone's forehead, which seems very Zorro-ish to me.

The story was adapted into a play called 'Curse of The Wraydons', which was later made into a film starring Tod Slaughter.

Rich, I think the connection between Batsowl and Batman was more indirect than that. I understand that the idea of 'bat men' was used in some of the old pulps, so perhaps a pulp writer was influenced by Batsowl, and the pulps influenced Bob Kane. We know that The Shadow was an influence on Batman for example, so perhaps other pulp stories were too.

Manic, Bob Kane was the one who came up with the name Bat-Man for his character. Yes, Bill Finger then fleshed it out into the character we recognise today. Finger's additions to the character are closer to Batsowl than Kane's red-costumed initial drawings admittedly.

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Established in 2006, BLIMEY! is a blog that looks back at classic British comics and promotes some current and upcoming titles. Images are copyright their respective publishers and are only used here for review purposes.

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About Me

I work as a professional humour comics artist and writer and have been freelancing full time since 1984, creating many characters such as TOM THUG, PETE AND HIS PIMPLE, COMBAT COLIN, BRICKMAN, ROBO-CAPERS, DEREK THE TROLL, SUBURBAN SATANISTS and others.
I've freelanced for IPC, Marvel Comics, Egmont, Panini,D.C. Thomson, and many others, covering the comics field from originated characters to licensed properties, pre-school to adult on comics such as BUSTER, OINK!, BEANO, DANDY, TRANSFORMERS, SONIC THE COMIC, TOXIC, VIZ, CiTV TELLYTOTS, LEGO ADVENTURES, HERMAN HEDNING, SWEET FA, ACTION FORCE, SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, RAMPAGE, LUCKY BAG COMIC, SWIFTSURE, WARLOCK, WHITE DWARF, ACES WEEKLY, THE DAREDEVILS, THE MIGHTY WORLD OF MARVEL, and many more.
My recent comics work has included:'Team Toxic' for Egmont's TOXIC magazine'Postman Prat', 'Kid Cops' and 'The Dark Newt' for THE DANDY'Rasher', 'Pup Parade', 'Lord Snooty' and 'Ivy the Terrible' for THE BEANO.
'The Daft Dimension' for DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE.